


Process

by cmshaw



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-09
Updated: 2004-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:59:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmshaw/pseuds/cmshaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a nightmare Ed has had before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Process

It's a nightmare Ed has had before; on some level, he recognizes that. He doesn't know how to wake up, though, and without that knowledge he's as trapped as if it were real.

_Across the room, Al wakes from the light meditation he calls sleep and turns his head toward his brother, worried._

Most people at Central fear the man called Scar because they don't understand how he can kill them so quickly and violently. They think that understanding can bring protection. It can, of course; Ed understands how Scar kills, and knows himself safer for it. Ed's fear runs deeper.

He kneels in the alleyway, cement so cold beneath him that he can't tell the difference between his flesh leg and automail leg. Scar kneels before him. Swirls of ink seem to melt in the rain along Scar's upraised arm, and Scar's hand is as hot as blood where it cups Ed's jaw. With his other hand, Scar carefully lifts away his dark glasses.

In his dream, Ed screams.

_Al sits up and swings his feet to the floor. His brother is thrashing now, kicking out at the bedclothes in deadly silence. Al should wake him before he hurts himself._

Scar's hand on his face keeps Ed from turning away. Rain runs down Scar's face and into his eyes. It runs down his cheeks blood-red like tears. Ed wants to cry, too, but he can't. Just around the corner, on the street where Ed's fellow military dogs wait, the Ishbal dead are piled. Scar's alchemy shatters everything it touches, but there's no mystery in that -- no, what Ed's forgotten is how any alchemist ever reassembles the pieces. Has Ed ever truly rebuilt something he's broken?

Scar leans forward and kisses him on the mouth.

_Ed does make a noise then, a horrid groan like a death-rattle, and Al starts to stand, not noticing until he does that Ed's movement in the bed is...suspicious._

Scar's hand on his face keeps Ed from turning away. His mouth on Ed's is blissfully hot, and Ed finds that he's been kneeling in the rain until he's grown cold right to the core. He closes his eyes and parts his lips to let Scar kiss him, and Scar gives a soft little sigh. His other hand comes up and closes around the back of Ed's head, with one warm thumb stroking up and down Ed's neck along the side of his windpipe. His tongue is in Ed's mouth.

_Al peers through the darkness, uncertain. Is Ed...? Like an _animal_...?_

Ed shudders against Scar's chest. Steam rises from Scar's bare brown skin where the rain hits it, although it still runs in icy rivulets down Ed's own pale skin, and the rainwater seems to boil away between Scar's palm and Ed's cheek. If Scar tries to kill him now, Ed won't stop him. Instead, Scar pushes him back, hands still on his face and throat, until he lies in a puddle of water on the ground looking up at Scar. Water soaks into his heavy clothing and pins him to the ground.

Scar's tattooed hand stays pressed against Ed's face, fingertips now rubbing his cheekbone, but his other hand traces down the center of Ed's body until it reaches his navel, where his shirt has fallen away and exposed his bare skin. Scar's hand presses in there. Ed gasps for air, feeling his stomach rise against Scar's palm with every inhalation. Scar smiles down at him with his bleeding eyes and moves his hand lower, beneath Ed's pants.

_If metal could blush, Al's body would be glowing cherry-red. He'd thought Ed was having a _bad_ dream! He lies down with his face to the wall to give his brother some privacy._

Ed arches up under the touch of Scar's hand. It should be hard and callused from Scar's deadly work, but it's smooth and knowing instead. Scar's fingers wrap completely around him and _pull_, as if pulling his life out by the roots. He knows about the danger from Scar's tattoo, but he stupidly forgot that simple flesh and blood can destroy as thoroughly as alchemy, and with as little chance for resurrection. Scar's twin hands on his face and cock are destruction and destruction both. Cement scrapes underneath his shoulders. Rain pools in his eyes. Ed shatters.

_Al starts. The creaking of the bedsprings on Ed's side of the room has stopped with a gasp from Ed, but now Ed is...crying. He begins softly, so that Al has to strain to believe it, but soon his sobs shake the bed._

Ed knows that he has to get up. He knows that there's something he has to stop Scar from doing -- he can't remember what it is, but the urgency of the dream is unmistakable. He _has to get up_.

Scar's hand is still stroking wetly between Ed's thighs, making Ed flinch in sensation that might as well be pain. It's the only movement his body will make. He doesn't get up.

Scar's body over his is huge. Droplets of blood spatter onto Ed's face, and he remembers cutting his finger to drip blood onto the raw ingredients of what wasn't his mother. That was the first time he failed to rebuild, and the worst, or at least the worst so far. Maybe now that he's broken himself he won't be able to do anything worse.

Scar kisses him again, slippery with blood and rain. Ed turns his head away, but Scar's thumb touches his bottom lip, gently, before twisting in and forcing his mouth open. Ed chokes and spits, but his mouth tastes like tears and he can't help swallowing. Where Scar is touching him his skin prickles, like shaking out his foot deadened from too long in one position, like setting his fingertips against a transmutation circle and feeling what it will do. It _hurts_, and with a convulsive motion he writhes out from underneath Scar and pushes back and back with his feet until his shoulders are against the alley wall. The front of his trousers gapes open, but he ignores it.

Ed is warm now from jaw to forehead and from belly to thighs. He claws his way upright with his fingers raw on the rough bricks of the wall, and Scar sits back on his heels, watching him. Ed takes one staggering step away, and then another, still gripping the bricks with his left hand, the one that bleeds blood instead of oil and rust. He has to look away to step over the debris littering the cement around the corner of the building, and when he looks back Scar is right behind him, nearly breathing in his ear. Ed yells and flings himself into a dead run, wet jacket and sticky trousers wrapping themselves around him until he feels like he's clawing his way through mud to escape. There's no one living or dead on the street when he gets there, but he turns the corners without hesitation.

_Al draws his knees up to his chest and hugs them, the reflex of someone who was once soft and vulnerable at the center of his body. He trembles, softly and metallically ringing, until his brother grows quiet again. With all his heart he wishes they could have stayed children forever._

One of these nights, Ed is utterly certain, he'll turn the right corner and everything will be whole again, just like it used to be before he broke it.


End file.
